Two Great Language Acquisition Resources

German Extensive Reading Stories

I’ve recently been reading the ebooks by André Klein. He provides a collection of reading material in authentic German for beginners and intermediate learners, with comprehensive glosses of expressions used in the stories.

I have now finished reading the first four in his Dino lernt Deutsch series for beginners. I think they are a fantastic resource for German learners. Now, as a caveat, I must say that I’m a false beginner for German, since my Dutch background makes German pretty easy to understand, so how it reads for someone of purely English-speaking background or other language backgrounds I can’t comment.

Each book consists of ten short stories, but all follow the adventures of Dino, as he lives in and travels through Germany. I’m guessing the format is as it is, so that when commencing reading, the learner can feel that they have achieved something by reading one short story.

The stories are not greatly dumbed down, in that there are smatterings of dialect (also translated), which somewhat increase the load on the learner. As I’m generally interested in language, I find this quite interesting. However, it may make the stories somewhat more challenging for the beginner.

He also has a couple of picture story books. These have little text and the language is not necessarily easier in terms of vocabulary load and grammar. They are, however, pleasant reads. I think the language is somewhat more constrained in the Dino series, so they are probably more useful for extensive reading.

André Klein’s books are found on Amazon, Smashwords and elsewhere. He also has more language resources on his website.

French Listening Resources

I’ve been floating around some Facebook groups about languages lately. One provided a link to the series Extra French. I hadn’t come across this before, but for me it is entertaining, in sit com format, and simple enough to follow. It’s probably a good place to start for listening practice, other than the practice of listening to stories while following the written text.

Another resource I’ve heard about recently is related to specific CEFR levels. Find French oral comprehension activities there. Good practice for those wanting to sit DELF/DALF exams.